We all receive tons of email forwards. I've been receiving them since 1997. So much so, that I have received some of them several scores of times, although I do not have hard data to back up that claim. Hence this blog.

Well, alright...not everything here was received as a forward. Some are gems that I have painstakingly collected over time

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

The Czech Republic commissioned an artwork to celebrate 6 months of its presidency of the European Union. While the work was expected to represent artists from all 27 EU member nations, as it turns out that the installation called Entropa was created by an all-Czech team of artists under the direction of David Černý.

Entropa plays on steretypes and pokes fun at one and all.

Austria as an energy powerhouse.

Belgium is a box of chocolates.

Bulgaria is represented as Turkish toilets.

Czech Republic is an electronic (LED) display quoting the President.

Denmark is a Lego-set.

France is a country on strike.

Finland is a hardwood floor.

Germany is crisscrossed by autobahns, in what some say a vaguely Swastika-like pattern.

Greece is a nation riddled with wildfire.

Hungary is a nuclear think-tank with ripe watermelons.

Ireland is a bagpipe.

Italy is just a large football ground.

Latvia is mountaneous country.

Luxembourg is a gold nugget on sale.

Malta is a rock with a dwarf elephant standing on it.

The Netherlands is submerged under water, with only some islamic minarets visible above the floodline.

Poland is shown as a pile of rubble, wherein some Catholic monks are erecting the gay flag, Iwo Jima style.

Portugal is a butcher's table with steak and colonial blood on it.

Romania is a Dracula-themed fun-park.

Spain is a large building site, in an obvious reference to its real-estate market.

Sweden is depicted as an IKEA ‘flat-pack’ cardboard box. But from a hole towards the bottom of the box, one can see a small piece from the Saab JAS-39 Gripen aircraft - a reference to the 2001 bribery scandal wherein Saab tried to sell 24 Gripen jets to Czech Republic with the help of UK-based BAE Systems.

The United Kingdom is represented by its conspicuous absence from the piece.